Water War or Water Diplomacy? Which Way?

AFRICANGLOBE – The politics of the Nile is full of tension, mistrust, anxiety, mystery and diplomatic confrontation among the downstream and upstream riparian countries since time immemorial.

The basin has never seen cooperation until recent times. However, there has been cooperation between the two downstream countries (Sudan and Egypt) with the decoration of the 1959 water sharing agreement. The upper riparian countries (Tanzania, DRC, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Eritrea, and Ethiopia) which generate 100 percent of the Nile waters, were neglected from any negotiations and agreements on the utilizations of the river by the colonial powers.

Historical records have shown evidences that demonstrate the occurrence of diplomatic struggle and direct military confrontations between the upstream and downstream countries. This is partly because of the unfair distribution and utilization of the Nile waters among the basin countries. Egypt has been attempting to ensure the continuation of the zero-sum game politics on the Nile waters by undermining the rights of the lower riparian states.

Relations between Ethiopia on the one hand, and Sudan and Egypt on the other, have been characterized by love and hate depending on the continuity and the change of the colonial status quo on utilization of the Nile waters. Besides, their foreign policy orientations have been drastically shaped and reshaped by the political dynamism in the Horn region. Generally, and in Nile politics particularly. In fact, the upstream countries have exploited the Nile water resources for their socio-economic developments by calming the 1929 and 1959 colonial agreements and by weakening the upstream states.

The net effect of these treaties was to deny the rights of the upper riparian countries from using the waters of the Nile without prior approval of Egypt. What is surprising is that these colonial agreements have excluded and downgraded the right of Ethiopia which contributes 85% of the Nile waters from getting its legal share from the Nile. The 1959 agreement has allocated 55.5 billion cube meters of water to Egypt, 18.5 cubic meters for Sudan, and 10 cubic meters to evaporate in the Sahara desert to keep the ecological balance of the environment.

This has been the status quo of the Nile politics in the past. However, due to geo-political, security and environmental transformations in the region, the colonial status quo has been challenged in a way that generates mutual benefits to the basin countries. Hence, the basin countries have strengthened their cooperation for regional joint planned growth under the framework of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) for the last decades.

The NBI provides a wide-basin framework to fight poverty and to promote socio-economic development among the ten Nile basin countries. It is a historical phenomenon in Nile politics in the sense that it is the first institutional regime on a shared and equitable use of the Nile Waters and for meaningful negotiations as well. Apart from real negotiations, the signing of the Comprehensive Framework Agreement (CFA) by the upstream countries in 2010 became instrumental in bringing new dynamism to Nile politics that significantly changed the colonial status quo and the zero-sum game politics.

This dynamism which challenged Egyptian apartheid policy on the utilization of the Nile waters has led to new political and diplomatic development. Issues surrounding the Nile have become the agenda of the Egyptian public after the official announcement of the diversion of the normal flow of the Nile water by the Ethiopian government. Following the redirection of the water, discussions among Egyptian politicians and policy makers in Egypt indicated possible foreign policy strategies and approaches to the Nile to quickly respond to the new dynamism. These possible foreign policy and security strategies that Egypt will put in place have direct or indirect implications to EthiopianS. Egypt may resort to either water diplomacy, water war, or the combination of the two strategies simultaneously to tackle the new development in Ethiopia.

Egyptian Strategies

Egypt, in spite of its geographical location in the Sahara desert and its absolute dependence on the Nile waters for its very existence, has been following a foreign policy and security strategy that ensures the uninterrupted flow of the Nile waters. The Nile water has been a key national interest concern of Egyptians, and thus is the central element in the circle of Egyptian foreign policy towards the Horn of Africa and Ethiopia as well. With the recent diversion of waters by the Ethiopian government, Egypt may take the following foreign policy and security strategies which have solid messages to the people of Ethiopia.

Water Diplomacy

Diplomacy has been described as the weapon of weak and poor states. In fact, it is important to transform the emotions and positions of opponent parties by imposing all possible diplomatic pressures. This includes sanctions at political, economic and diplomatic levels. Many states used to apply diplomacy in matters of national interest before resorting to war. In this regard, hard diplomacy has been frequently used by Egypt to ensure the perpetuation of the zero-sum game politics in the Nile basin. However, Ethiopia has been insisting on a win-win approach in dealing with matters of the Nile.

Egypt may use the hard diplomacy to react to the current diplomatic and security developments in Ethiopia as part of their propaganda. For instance, it may:

•Attempt to divert the diplomatic negotiations by presenting a distorted image of the dam and by magnifying its negative socio-economic and environmental impacts. Egypt may also present the construction of the dam to the Arab world and the international community at large as a planned strategy by Ethiopia to damage its national interest. By doing so, it will create confusion and ambiguity.

•Take the matter to the Arab League using its influential position as the seat of the League, so as to impose diplomatic sanctions on Ethiopia and to reduce the flow of foreign currency income by disconnecting its trade ties. It may also convince the Arab countries not to export oil, which will gradually aggravate inflation and living expenses and could be translated in to a political crisis.

•Submit the case to the AU, UN, UNSC and ICJ arguing that the construction of the dam severely reduces its “historical share” of the water, for the sake of bringing hard diplomatic pressure on Ethiopia.

RELATED ARTICLES

AFRICANGLOBE - My heartfelt condolences go out to the family, friends, neighbors and all others that loved George Floyd who was recently murdered by law enforcement officers in Minnesota. Every day in America a Black man, woman or child becomes a victim of police brutality and misconduct!

AFRICANGLOBE - Being neither a scientist nor a physician, I can only rely on my common sense as to why Black communities have been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. And no, I don’t think it’s because Kunta Kinte was forced to change his name to Toby, or the prevalence of underlying health conditions caused by poor lifestyle choices.

AFRICANGLOBE - I stopped going to rallies and protests because I know how most of today’s protests will turn out. First, the local people will pretty much be kicked to the curb and the modern day carpetbaggers will assume the leadership of the protest event.

AFRICANGLOBE - Don’t think the recent murder of a young Black man in South Georgia is an isolated incident. You have to be careful and cautious in every neighborhood you’re in. Today’s klansmen are embolden by the white nationalists in the White House, they are brave when they have numbers, they are courageous when they have weapons and they have little or no fear of a judge or jury giving them the death penalty for killing Black men, women and children!

AFRICANGLOBE - For years now, we’ve been telling you that eventually the ever-growing alphabet soup that is the LGBTQ Movement would, at some point, have to add a ‘P’ to their acronym. The letter ‘P’ of course standing for pedophile. Why is this inevitable? Because of their motto, ‘all love is love‘. Logical thinking people say otherwise. Pedophiles are rebranding themselves as “MAPs” or “Minor Attracted Persons” in an effort to gain acceptance and be included into the LGBT community.

AFRICANGLOBE - As part of its efforts to end negotiations on the Ethiopia dam project, Egypt has been working to undermine and remove Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok because he fully adopts the Ethiopian vision, internal sources have said.

We are an organisation of people dedicated to the propagation and the dissemination of news and information relating to, and of importance to African Peoples worldwide. Our main objective is to provide an online portal where people of African decent; African heritage and friends of Africa can liaise and exchange knowledge and information.

We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

Before or at the time of collecting personal information, we will identify the purposes for which information is being collected.

We will collect and use of personal information solely with the objective of fulfilling those purposes specified by us and for other compatible purposes, unless we obtain the consent of the individual concerned or as required by law.

We will only retain personal information as long as necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.

We will collect personal information by lawful and fair means and, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the individual concerned.

Personal data should be relevant to the purposes for which it is to be used, and, to the extent necessary for those purposes, should be accurate, complete, and up-to-date.

We will protect personal information by reasonable security safeguards against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.

We will make readily available to customers information about our policies and practices relating to the management of personal information.

AfricanGlobe.net may use cookies to store personal preferences on your computer and you agree to this

Third party websites including advertisers on AfricanGlobe.net also may place a cookie on your computer and by visiting AfricanGlobe.net you agree to this.

Advertisers may place a file called cookie on your personal computer and by visiting AfricanGlobe.net you give permission to that.

All posts made on AfricanGlobe.net express the views and opinions of the author and not the webmaster, admin or any other member of AfricanGlobe.net.

Under no circumstances, including, but not limited to, negligence, shall AfricanGlobe.net, be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages that result from the use of, or the inability to use, AfricanGlobe.net services

By visiting AfricanGlobe.net you specifically acknowledge and agree that AfricanGlobe.net is not liable for any defamatory, offensive or illegal conduct of any user.

We are committed to conducting our business in accordance with these principles in order to ensure that the confidentiality of personal information is protected and maintained.

Content Lockers

This Terms of Use explains the operation principle of the Content Lockers on this website.

On this website, you can encounter the Content Lockers which may ask
you to sign in, subscribe, enter your name or perform other actions to get access to the locked content.

Using Your Email Address

When you enter your email or sign in through social networks, you agree to that your
email address will be added to the subscription list for sending target news and special offers.
You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the link at the end of any of emails received from us.

Social Apps & Permissions

When you sign in through social networks, the Content Locker may ask you to grant
permissions to read or perform some social actions.

The Content Locker retrieves only the following information (according the Privacy Policy of this website):

Person name

Email address

Content Locker never collects other data and never publish anything in social networks from your behalf without your permissions.
After unlocking the content the Content Locker removes all the access tokens received from you and never uses them again.

If there are any questions regarding this Terms of Use you may contact us.